The Lincoln Park City Council approves the city hall generator project with a 30 percent contingency to allow for the unforeseen challenges during the renovation and replacement of the building’s electrical system to accommodate the new generator, as well as the likely project cost increases.
Contingency will help buffer against expected project costs
By SUE SUCHYTA
Sunday Times Newspapers
LINCOLN PARK – The City Council awarded a bid for the new city hall generator project Dec. 5, while approving a 30 percent contingency cost to cover any unforeseen electrical system work needed.
The bid from Power Solutions Group for $367,904 was approved, with a 30 percent contingency, which brings the possible project cost to $478,275, which is more than $100,000 more than the original project budget allocation.
In a Dec. 5 memo to the council, City Manager James Krizan said the main points to consider are total project cost and the period of time that city government is likely to stay in the current city hall.
Hennessey Engineers project architect Ray Parker answers questions from city council members about the city hall generator project, the need to refurbish the building’s outdated electrical system and the project contingencies to pay for it.
Hennessey Engineers project architect Ray Parker said the project involves the renovation and replacement of the existing electrical system at the city hall to accommodate the new backup generator. He noted that the electrical system in the entire building is outdated and that many of the system components are obsolete.
Parker said that extensive testing and rewiring of existing electrical runs is to be expected, but the actual extent cannot be determined until the renovations are under way.
He said the nature of electrical repairs in the building will necessitate the increased cost of working during evenings and weekends so as not to avoid the disrupt of electric service during the workday.
“Everything has to be new,” Parker said. “We have to test every circuit from every panel in the building, and if one of those doesn’t work going back down to the basement, we now have to fish new lines all of the way through.”
He said that the project has too many unknowns for a vendor to go into without a contingency.
Parker said that 10 percent of the contingency was based on the material component, with 20 percent of the contingency based on the labor portion.
“We walked through and there are areas where you can pull the faceplate off of a junction box and there are wires that should not be in there,” he said. “So, there are things that are labeled in the basement that are one thing and you get to the second floor and follow them around that should not be there.”
He said the vendors saw so many anomalies that they wanted city officials to establish a contingency cushion.
“This is so old and there are so many nuances to the whole project that we felt we needed to cover – and hopefully we won’t have to use it – but we have to do sounding, where they go from each wire in each panel and sound it back to the main board in the basement, and if a wire is bad, it means a whole new wire has to be pulled from it.”
Parker said that there are just too many of those potential circumstances to justify it being part of the bid package, and they will instead cover it with the contingency caveat at the end.